FAZ-wikis
FAZ Wikis ASS.03 911221 The word “wiki” is in fact the contracted form of the Hawaiian word “wiki-wiki” which means quick. Here in a broader sense quick means easy because a wiki is a web site where you can easily settle your stuff and also a place where anyone can easily edit anything anytime they want. Undoubtedly, Wikipedia is now the most famous wiki all over the world. It has materialized the dream of accessibility to the sum of all human knowledge. 'Why must we teach Wikipedia to our students?' 1) They need it for their research. 2) Wikipedia is becoming a trusted and cited source by many major news outlets and scholars. '3) '''There is much to learn in the process of using Wikipedia that can help our students become better learners-namely, collaboration and negotiation skills. 'What are the benefits of wikis for different professionals?' 1) '''Project teams': use wikis to keep track of their work. 2) People in business: employees can share information and collaborate in an easy way. They can also make use of these tools to manage documents and information. 3) Teachers: build collaborative resource sites for their classes. 'How do wikis work?' Every wiki page has a link, usually at the top, called as “edit page” which enables you to exert edits. In addition, there is always another link on a wiki page called as “history”. By clicking that you can see when what changes have made by whom. Then, the best part is if someone come and muck things up, you can easily revert to the previous version using the history link. This is of great importance in case you face vandalism. Another link of wiki pages which is not usually familiar to the most users is the “discussion” link. Whereas wikis are not as common places for conversations as blogs, discussion links on wikis provide a chance for editors or contributors to discuss what should or shouldn’t appear out there in the entry. It is a place for reflection; a place to keep the entire process transparent. 'Some challenges in using wikis:' 1) Wikis foster the idea of open source to the mainstream; however, they contradict the traditional idea of copy right and intellectual property rights. 2) In case of Wikipedia, there is no question that each entry is kind of collaborative research paper which suggests a neutral viewpoint rather than defending a specific idea or thesis. Therefore, this poses another challenge to students about how they can evaluate those entries. As a result, most educators advise their students to use Wikipedia as a starting point for their work, but not as the sole one. 3) Security on wikis is another challenge put forward. However, in educational environments you can reduce the risk level by limiting access to the site. In other words, you can employ a password and login system to restrict collaboration to the boundaries of your class students only. 'Advantages of wikis as educational tools:' When you use a wiki as an educational tool in your teaching practice, you will see the more autonomy you give your students, the better their quality of contents on wikis. To put it another way, it appears as a very democratic practice of publishing content and negotiating correctness, meaning and relevance of the materials. In fact, wikis are great tools to help students teach each other. In brief, wikis promote collaboration and a sense of belonging to a community who creates knowledge collectively. 'Different modes of using wikis with students:' 1) Use wikis to build a kind of personalized co-constructed curriculum where every student and teacher who is engaged with that course can actually contribute. It can become a resource and an articulation for best practices as well. 2) Get your students to publish or edit entries to books that have already started elsewhere. Then, encourage them to keep track of their ideas in order to see how they are edited by others. This way they get to learn about the concept of open-source software. 'Examples of wiki tools for schools:' 1) Wikispaces.com 2) Wetpaint.com 3) PBwiki.com 4) Sites.Google.com 5) Webnote which is like an online Post-it note repository and the most prominent feature of it is to enable you to save snippets of web pages out there. 6) Docs.Google.com 'Reference:' Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson student's name: FATEMEH AFTAHI ZANGENEH